Sorry for downtime

Welcome back, TC!

What's perhaps less obvious if you're not the one wrangling with the server is this: ABCtales has *never* seen so many people and so much traffic. Since the new site went live, site traffic is up 400%. There are some days we're dealing with upwards of fifty thousand visits. Meanwhile, when the flood waters rush in, we've got to deal with whatever issues arise on the live server as it happens. Underneath the sets and the forums and the stories and the cherrypicking, which I've added as custom modules, is a seriously great system called Drupal. But there are things which happen here which have never happened to another Drupal site. To pick one example, nobody else on earth using this base software has a forum with over a quarter million posts. This morning I had yet another battle with the database, and we turned up another issue which would never affect a smaller site. Great! The end result today is we served up 10,000 more pages than on any day last week, and it's all going very nicely right now. There'll probably be other issues - we'll carry on fixing them. But on the plus side... a) ABCtales has never been so popular and b) We're sending the fixes we make to the software back to the project to enable others to build huge community sites like this. So, ya know, thanks. ---- John H

Yes, aren't we all wonderful. :-) Anyway, I was reading Fish's thread and decided to reply. Logged in and was sent to my home page. Clicked "TALK" and found myself on the forum but logged out. I logged in again ... back on the forum list. Clicked "gen diss" clicked "fish's post" ... found mysel logged out. Logged in again and could post...although the stuff I wrote after my quote went astray. Having posted what went missing, I clicked on "gen diss" again, clicked "sorry for downtime" thread (i.e. this one) and had to log in again. This time it returned me to the thread. Not complaining, just informing.

Also, when returning to forum list, the last post does not show unless you re-enter the site. Don't blame my cookies, I ate them all yesterday via lavasoft and spybot.

Yes, it was all a bit squiffy yesterday (a.m. in particular)... Seems to be chugging along pretty smoothly at present, though, touch wood! *** cracks whip *** - back to work, fingers'n'co... ;-) "P"

working fine for me and a lot lot faster. Although the sending you to your own details page when you log in is a bit of a pain. Try hitting refresh stormy, the non-logged-in page may be cached.

Stormy's on AOL, look. Home of the preposterously-aggressive proxy servers. Sorry, colleague. Meanwhile allow me to intoduce you to the CTRL-refresh combination. Push the refresh button on your browser toolbar while holding in the Control (PC) or Option (Mac) key on your keyboard. Forces a refresh, even on AOL. ---- John H

Dear Mr. Fingers, Thank you very much for your helpful information. It would, indeed, appear that AOL's poxy proxies are at fault. All is fine here now and zing, zing, zinging along. (No songs, please.)

Hrm, it's playing up and doing it again. I've taken drastic action today insofaras I've stripped AOL and its bastardised version of IE to the bones. I now: empty all temp files upon exit; compress graphics; search for new pages every visit. I've deleted cache, again (and cookies and whatever else I could delete), and got this sucker running so sleek it would easily win the gold medal for sleekness in my street. And the forced refresh doesn't work. Now, I know you are going to blame AOL again but, this is the only site I have a problem with, apart from Hox's but I managed to get in there a few weeks ago... brr. Any other AOHellers out there with similar probs?

Oh, and depending upon how I click around the site, I find myself having to log in again at times.

Like now, when I clicked "general discussion" after making this post.

And after making that post ^, according to my browser, I didn't. Nor was i logged in. I quit out of the browser, came back in via a bookmark, and voila, there is my post and ... I'm still logged in. Confused? I am. I'll shut up now.

Colin, sounds like you've got too much phone line between your house and the exchange;have you tried pulling some through to shorten it?

Yes, and it coiled into the shape of a noose.

No, he's got a point, I keep logging in and out... *look no hands* Personally I think there's a little green gremlin in my computer chewing away on something important. Or perhaps on the ABCtales cookies. Lisa PS Ever wonder why gremlins had to be green?

Another tweak... This one sends different HTTP headers depending on your logged-in status. Hoping it'll force AOL and similar to behave. Reports welcome. ---- John H

forced refresh worked for me just now ... i am on aohell ...

Well, the time according to my PC is 23.34. The time of Fish's post is 20.21. Three hours and thirteen minutes ago. On the general diss. list of threads it said "last post by Ivoryfishbone 40 minutes ago". Now, that can't be an old page my PC has conjured up from its memory because I haven't been online for many hours let alone 40 minutes. Before posting this I forced a refresh and the page showed the same info. Odd. When you say it worked for you Fish, did you mean that the page simply refreshed or did it come back with the new times? i.e. a post made 5 mins ago now says 6 mins ago, for example?

Anyway, its no big deal, I can still follow what's going on ... it's a tad confusing is all.

heh, just to annoy you slightly more with my petty niggles ... I now appear to have been a member for only 21 weeks yet when I first logged in to the new site it showed the correct length of time i.e forever. Right, in an efort not to multi-post I'm going to sit here for a few minutes and think of any other complaints I might have. About the site, that is, and not the sort of things you read about in personal health magazines. *** Oh yeah, it still says I have opted not be rated when I haven't and I can't change it. tum de dum Oh yeah, why can't we search the forum anymore? I know you can do a search in general but that's hardly the same thing ... it produces some bizarre results. tick, tick, tick. Oh yeah, yesterday, I searched for my poem, Reflections, using the alphabetically (sic) search function. Apparently, it doesn't exist. Ok, my 5 mins is up. I'll shut up for another 24 hours.

Blimey, it's working. It's actually keeping me logged in in ANd my posts are showing with the correct time. Yee HAR!

I miss the old forum layout and the search engine facility. Has Missi left the building?

"15% of the site has been indexed. There are 47986 items left to index." Or for those of you not party to TC and my phone conversations, that's 14% it did since Tuesday. Searching will gradually improve as the index gets bigger, and at this rate it gets to 100% on about November 9th. ---- John H

You really should consider hosting the site on a superfast server, like one of the new HoxCo Slicker-than-hot-snot specials ( Reasonable rates, loose women taken in part exchange ).

Following on from TC, I blame MB for everything, including the failure of my poem three before last. And bird flu.

There's quite a few builkdings I've left, Flashy, but this ain't one of them. I just had a bit of connectivity trouble that's all. Nothing to do with ABC I hasten to add. But those bastards at BT have lost another customer, just as soon as I can transfer to one of those companies that allow me to by-pass BT completely, ie, I won't have to pay the scum line rental. Glad to see the site has speeded up a bit, though I doubt the installation of Gatso's will be necessary yet!